


shrike to your sharp

by violaceum_vitellina_viridis



Series: yule gift fics [7]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alluded to Canonical Rape/Non-Con, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Renfri | Shrike Story, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, Murder, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Non-Graphic Violence, Self-Defense, Time Travel, no beta we die like stregobor fucking should have, no rape/non-con actually happens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:20:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28106934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violaceum_vitellina_viridis/pseuds/violaceum_vitellina_viridis
Summary: Renfri’s voice is flat. Her head hurts, and she obviously can’t go home –fuckingAridea…. She is, for all intents and purposes, fucking lost in the woods somewhere approximately between Creyden and Malleore. There is a fuckingchildstanding in front of her, clearly not where he belongs, looking more and more concerned the longer she remains silent. “Fuck. What’s your name, kid?”“Geralt.”
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Renfri | Shrike
Series: yule gift fics [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2038730
Comments: 17
Kudos: 55





	shrike to your sharp

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MaliciousVegetarian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaliciousVegetarian/gifts).



> this is...only kind of the prompt i got. kinda-sorta. 
> 
> _but_ that means if lasota wants to write the story from hir prompt, ze can! because this fic is for hir :D it was very fun to write, love 💜
> 
> notes for anyone wary of the tags: renfri's backstory remains the same here, she's just slightly older when she runs away from home and stregobor/aridea's man tries to kill her. there is nothing graphic, but basic details of that are mentioned in passing. please let me know if you think i missed a tag!

She doesn’t know what happens.

One moment, the huntsman is bearing down on her, rank breath covering her face and making her cough, rough, work-weathered hands pulling at her hair, her wrist. He’s large, larger than her by far, and stinking, but strong, too strong.

But then he stops, looks to the side, and she sees her chance, clear as day.

The brooch makes a horrible  _ schl-ck  _ noise as it sinks through his ear into his brain, and the huntsman shouts, fingers scrabbling where they’re still gripping her. She doesn’t think, barely even breathes, heart hammering, and twists the brooch sharply, left and then right, and rips it out of his ear with an even worse noise than before.

He chokes, says something she doesn’t understand, and collapses to the side.

_ Renfri, _ she hears her mother’s voice in her head, soft and serious,  _ never let a man touch you when you don’t want it. Use a mallet, a broken bottle, your two good hands, darling, you never have to give in to them. _

She hopes that using the brooch isn’t too disrespectful.

Then again, her mother never did give a fuck about the dead.

It’s difficult to shove the huntsman’s corpse from her legs but not impossible, and eventually she’s clambering to her feet and brushing leaves and dirt from her pants, her hair. She’s trembling, but she ignores it. The brooch gets wiped off on her already-ruined shirt, and she pins it back onto her chest.

A twig snaps, and she jerks to look.

“What happened?”

Renfri has a snippy reply on the tip of her tongue, a slur and a curse, but then she really looks, and the ire falls away. He’s just a boy, maybe seven or eight – half her age,  _ shit _ – and he should look scared, he  _ should, _ she just murdered a man in front of him.

But he doesn’t look scared. He looks  _ concerned. _

“Are you okay?” he asks, reaching out to her. He doesn’t touch, though, hand just hovering in the air between them, and Renfri doesn’t know what to call the emotion rising in her chest but it’s overwhelming all the same. “You’re bleeding.”

“I – ” She reaches up, feels her head where it’s aching, and her fingers come away bloody. “Oh. I am.”

“Can I help?” His green eyes are wide and earnest, the color standing out starkly against his pale, freckled skin and red hair. “I know how.”

“Do you?” Renfri asks, before she can stop herself. Gods above, he’s so small, but the look in his eyes is decades older than he is. Where did he  _ come  _ from? “Where are you from?”

He frowns. “…Kaedwen,” he says, but he sounds unsure.

“Kaedwen,” Renfri repeats, looking to the east. “How did you get here?”

The frown on his face deepens. “I…it was blue. Next to the river. I fell in.”

“You fell into the river?”

He shakes his head. “No. The thing next to it.”

“The thing next to it.” Renfri’s voice is flat. Her head hurts, and she obviously can’t go home –  _ fucking  _ Aridea…. She is, for all intents and purposes, fucking lost in the woods somewhere approximately between Creyden and Malleore. There is a fucking  _ child _ standing in front of her, clearly not where he belongs, looking more and more concerned the longer she remains silent. “Fuck. What’s your name, kid?”

“Geralt.”

“Well, Geralt. So you fell into – the thing next to the river, whatever it was, and you landed here?”

Certainly there’s weirder stories, but Renfri is hard pressed to think of any right now.

“Yeah.”

Renfri takes a deep, steadying breath. “Do you know what river?”

“The Gw…,” Geralt frowns for a second, “Gwenllech.”

“The fucking  _ Gwenllech, _ ” Renfri hisses. She goes to rub her forehead before she remembers her wound, and hisses again when she accidentally touches it.

“Really, I can help. Let me?”

She squints at him, where he’s holding that same hand out to her still. “…alright, fine.”

* * *

“How old are you?” she asks, while they walk along a game path and Geralt studies the foliage underfoot with avid focus.

“Eight,” he answers. “I think.”

“…you  _ think? _ ”

He looks back to her and shrugs, then returns to searching for…whatever it is he’s searching for. “Don’t know for sure,” he says, as if that’s an answer. Renfri stares at the back of his head, where there’s a tangled knot of hair.

“Aha!”

She jumps, but Geralt dives between two trees and returns with what looks like several leaves and some kind of fungus.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“Helping,” he says, sitting himself down in the dirt as if this is completely normal. He sets his leaves and mushrooms in front of him, then fishes through his trouser pockets. He takes a little wooden bowl out of them, then looks around and grabs a random pebble from nearby. With those things, he starts grinding the leaves and mushrooms into some kind of paste.

“What will that…do, exactly?” Renfri asks, frowning down at him.

“Helps prevent infection,” he says, very clearly parroting someone else’s words, the way Renfri remembers repeating her letters before she actually understood them.

“And where did you…learn that?”

Geralt looks back up to her, and there’s a little smile on his face now. “Kaer Morhen,” he says, and Renfri’s blood runs cold, colder when he continues. “I’m going to be a Witcher.”

“Oh.”

Well, that certainly complicates things.

* * *

It…actually doesn’t complicate things. Much, at least.

She’s not really sure why she doesn’t just take Geralt to an alderman, inform them where he should be, and have done with it. But she…doesn’t.

Instead, they travel together. He teaches her how to use a sword. Well, sort of.

It’s obvious he doesn’t know much more than her, but anything he  _ does _ know feels like a lot, because Renfri – well, Renfri is… _ was _ a princess. She wasn’t taught fuck  _ all _ .

Geralt, meanwhile, knows how to hold a weapon and how to move it without removing one of his own limbs. It’s better than nothing.

Especially when Renfri has to kill the man who tries to ransack their camp at dawn. Geralt is awake, on the other side of the banked fire, she knows. She can feel the weight of his knowing stare, the way it makes her neck prickle.

He’s…odd. A human child, absolutely, but also just…a little bit more. He doesn’t really talk about Kaer Morhen much, and sometimes he doesn’t talk  _ at all, _ but she’s gathered the bare bones of his upbringing. It’s…not pretty. And considering some of the things he has said, often cut off before he stops talking entirely for a while, she’s also gathered that it would have just gotten worse, had he not fallen into – well, whatever it was.

“Are you hurt?”

“No. Go back to sleep, Geralt.”

“Renfri – ”

“Geralt, please.”

“…okay.”

“Thank you.”

She drags the bandit’s body away from their camp, no small feat but something she has to do if they don’t want to be set upon by wolves or a bear.

Geralt isn’t actually asleep when she returns, but he doesn’t turn to her, doesn’t ask questions, and she breaths a sigh of relief.

* * *

Geralt also doesn’t ask questions when she disappears with random men.

She’s thankful for that, too.

* * *

At some point, probably around the end of the first year they spent wandering with one another, Geralt sort of just became…hers. She’s not quite sure if she considers him a sibling or a child, but either way, she’s protective of him, and he’s fiercely protective of her.

She also can’t really pinpoint when she became  _ Shrike, _ either, but it doesn’t much matter. She has Geralt, she has her men – all equally protective of her and Geralt, as they are of them – and she’s…surviving. Almost,  _ almost  _ living. It’s something, better than she every thought she would have.

Which is why, when she hears word of a snake of a sorcerer hiding behind a dead man’s name in Blaviken, she goes.

Her men and Geralt come with her, of course they do, because they  _ always _ do.

Meeting a Witcher, though, that’s…unexpected.

Even more so that this Witcher comes from Kaer Morhen.

* * *

“Point me to the alderman's house.”

Renfri knows, immediately, that this is going to go south. Never mind that the barkeep is a harebrained bigot, everyone in the tavern was on edge the moment the Witcher marched in.

Including Geralt.  _ Especially  _ Geralt, but he’s stiff beside her for very different reasons.

And then a familiar voice – Nohorn. The absolute  _ idiot. _ “C'mon, Witcher. You're not scared of us, are ya? Show us what you've got.”

Obviously, she can’t let that stand. First of all, if that dumbfuck gets them kicked out of Blaviken, she’ll have his head for it – and second of all, Geralt is practically  _ vibrating  _ beside her. There are a lot of reasons to talk to his Witcher, and a lot of reasons she shouldn’t let her cohort piss him off.

“Can you not leave it alone for a moment?” she snaps. Nohorn flinches. So does Geralt.

The barkeep opens his mouth, of course. “Witchers can't be trusted.”

“I'm not speaking to you,” she says, cold and clear. The Witcher has turned to look at her now, expression pinched and suspicious. Fair enough, she supposes. She keeps her expression neutral but mostly open, sets a hand on Geralt’s wrist where he’s clenching his fist on his own knee. “I apologize for my man's interference in your day,” a pointed look toward Nohorn, and he flinches again. “Hopefully he can improve his behavior by tomorrow's market.”

Nohorn apologizes, but she ignores it.

“What’s your game?”

Renfri snorts. “No game, Witcher. Some questions, though. Would you like breakfast?”

“No.”

“Well, pity – ”

Marilka interrupts, and the Witcher leaves. Renfri sighs, and squeezes Geralt’s wrist.

“Later,” she says.

“Wolf medallion,” he mutters, and tears into his own breakfast with barely-contained violence.

* * *

She expects a lot of things, when they hunt the Witcher down after his visit to Master Irion’s tower. She expects  _ a lot  _ of things.

The fact that the Witcher’s expression crumbles at the sight of them, at her story, she didn’t expect.

“Aw, fuck,” he mutters, violently sheathing his sword. “You’re just fucking  _ kids. _ ”


End file.
